MIT Added Bank Of England To Its List Of CBDC Research Partners

MIT added Bank of England to its list of CBDC research partners, while it is already working with the Bank of Canada and the FED so let’s read more in today’s latest cryptocurrency news.

The Bank of England announced on Friday that it reached an agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative or DCI on a joint project for CBDCs. The bank said that the new proejct was for research purposes and not intended to develop an operational CBDC.

The banks started studying CBDC in 2020 and released a discussion paper this year which the DCI responded to with a discussion on how the CBDC can meet the objectives stated in the paper. The bank and the treasury headed up the task force in April with the latest discussion paper being released on Thursday.

MIT added Bank of England to its list of CBDC research partners while other voices also entered the discussions as well with the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee expressing mixed sentiments about launching a digital pound early this year and pointed out advantages on the speed of settlements and cheaper as well as cross-border payments alongside with Challenges for the financial stability and the protection of privacy.

The Bank of England joins the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Bank of Canada s CBDC research partners at the DCI that is the originator of the OpenCBDC proejct and the Bank of Canada announced the year-long joint research efforts last week while the Boston fed kicked off the collaboration with the DCI back in 2020. MIT is not alone but about 60 other countries that research CBDC and there are about 15 pilot projects that are upcoming including China’s digital yuan. Australia, Singapore, South Africa, and Malaysia took part in the BIS Hub project Dunbar while Nigeria and the Bahamas already launched a CBDC, and Jamaica is expected to do so soon.

As recently reported, Canada’s central bank collaborated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to launch the twelve-month project on central bank digital currencies and the study will inform the financial institution about the product’s merits and implementation in the monetary networks. According to the recent announcement, MIT and the Bank of Canada will be joining the many countries which started exploring CBDCs. The bank partnered with MIT on a one-year research project in order to explore how advanced technologies can affect the design of a CBDC.